A CULTURAL-SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO ROMANIAN AND JAPANESE ADVERTISING DISCOURSE. CASE STUDY: PUBLIC SERVICE PRINT ADVERTISEMENTS
A CULTURAL-SEMIOTIC APPROACH TO ROMANIAN AND JAPANESE ADVERTISING DISCOURSE. CASE STUDY: PUBLIC SERVICE PRINT ADVERTISEMENTS

Summary/Abstract: The present paper aims to reveal the differences between Romanian and Japanese print advertisements from a cultural-semiotic perspective. Starting with Peirce‘s trichotomy of signs and Hofstede‘s theory of cultural dimensions (1980, 2001) we intend to describe the particularities of advertising discourse in the proposed context in order to find possible explanations for the variations in discourse construction. Our hypothesis is built around the idea that advertisements are a reflection of a society‘s view of the world and therefore a cultural-semiotic analysis will provide significant insight into how norms and values are conveyed through signs. Considering that advertising discourse can be perceived as a collective good in which values and ideals are expressed through symbols a diachronic analysis of the words of advertisements can work as a powerful markers indicating how societies change. Perhaps the most visible change in discourse construction is the shift from an explicit to an implicit meaning and this phenomena be observed through the use of symbols and visual cues rather than words. Through the analysis of four Japanese and Romanian public service print advertisements created after 2015 we aim to explore the constituent signs of advertising discourse focusing on both language and context in order to show the connection between language and culture in discourse construction. The findings suggest that cultural adaptation is a decisive factor in persuading the viewer.

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